Saratoga Girls Program Lawsuit

seriously? how much worse can it get? we’re members of the team being given EPO or something?

Not really horrible maybe, but is it against the entire purpose of youth sports? isn’t supposed to be character building and preparing for life or is it making kids 100% obsessed with 1 activity defying a well rounded person in order to win to help the careers of adults?

Like?

I said this in another thread, most of these elite high school programs are so structured that the kids are just along for the ride. Show up and follow orders. These are the same programs that often have athletes struggle in college most because they never had to own their own success or find motivation.

Doesn’t surprise me at all they ran their program like this. Insert any other historic program and I imagine it’ll be the same

There seems to be a lot of abuse towards women in sports

- Mary Cain: her coach wanted her to lose weight in order to perform. body shaming

- Saratoga girls: coaches want them to train hard to perform. Psychological abuse

-Rutgers university basketball. Coach using abusive language towards athletes. Bullying.

Screw this disingenuous troll post.

salazar gave Mary cain laxatives and birth control pills. He pushed her into starving herself in a 3 month window even though she was performing well.

”train hard”? Did you read the article? A girl alleges that she broke her ribs from coughing so much from pneumonia and her coaches still wouldn’t let her take a day. Nicole blood was told she had to train though it band syndrome.

people are always choosing to ignore the worst most damning evidence in cases like this and create their own narrative claiming “it’s not that bad”! Yeah I guess it’s not when you are ignoring the worst parts of it.

h

They have high school athletes running mandatory doubles at 5am before school. Middle school girls are running 60-70 miles per week. They all have to submit food logs and they get yelled at if they eat even just one M&M.

I was college teammates with one of the guys who ran for Saratoga around 2010. One girl had been running on a stress fracture for so long she ended up with a complete fracture mid run. Just went down.

The 7 day a week thing is getting brought up because it's provable and there's clear guidelines around it. It's not because it's the worst thing that was going on there.

You and others raise a great point. Assuming these things are true and not sensationalized (which I believe youth are prone to do), then, yes, these coaches (imo) would be over the line, and I would not want one of my children running with them. If there were video evidence of just a few (maybe even just 1) examples of what has been alleged, like yelling over one M&M, then the coaches need to go.

All that said, while I would not advocate for this full on obsession, there may be other parents who think that this type of drive is good. And, if it's not abuse, then who am I to get in the way of another parent's parenting style. So, then I guess it needs to be clarified what is and is not "abuse". As far as a coach "making a child run through injury", it's sad if that occurs (esp if longterm damage results), but there can be two sides to that story.

My desire for this program and all programs would be for kids (and their parents) to be able to go up the chain at the school and get the necessary permission for a child to continue running and competing with the team, but with their own training program. A good coach should be able to convince the team that their training is good and effective and for their best overall interests. Every once in a while, however, a child may go their own way, and that's fine. The problem is when a child has no other real options to run with a team or compete, unless they do so under a heavy handed coach who only allows their way. I believe some states allow students to pick the public school they wish to attend. My state does not.

After retiring, a friend of mine called to ask if his grandson's coach was flipping crazy. That cross country/track coach called the grandson on Christmas Day to complain that he had not shown up for practice that morning. Note: Christmas Day that year did not fall on a Sunday.

I'm pretty sure mandatory practice on Christmas Day has to be some kind of violation no matter what day of the week it's on. I wouldn't know because I've never tried to have a practice that day.

I worked with a girl who ran for SS, she was anywhere from 5-8th runner in the mid-2000s and she had some stories, but she "survived" because she says she gave up running after high school, but seemed to be completely fine from the experience.

It's always going to impact girls more than boys. I know some pretty "abusive" boy programs that are NXN programs that we are all familiar with, coaches that are pretty legendary, running their kids into the ground, double thresholds, huge summer camps that are pretty much mandatory. But the boys won't complain and so many drop out no one ever knows their names.

Back to 1993 - decision regarding providing vitamin C supplements to the athletes

This ended in a libel lawsuit.

30 years ago. Is that the same coaches?

The culture of many high school wrestling programs is FAR worse in terms of being controlling.

I remember plenty of wrestlers who would NEVER touch anything at lunch for months trying to lose weight. Sometimes they would get permission to go down to the weight room during study hall to put on three sweatshirts, sweatpants, and a winter hat and jump rope for most of the period. The wrestling room was always very hot; I am curious what temperature they had the thermostat set at. Even gaining one pound was seen as "hurting the team" because you might not make weight and consequently not be able to compete that week. Some people had a ridiculous belief that they could "spit" away some weight. They would carry a spit cup with them and just spit in it all day long.

The obsession with weight was far beyond anything Saratoga's coaches are being accused of and this was the typical wrestling program, not an anomaly.

Yes.

Absolutely. A coach can't dictate the personal lives' of his athletes.